Windows Backup, Thunderbird and Malware

[Vanadium 50]

TL;DR Summary

Looking for help in creating a successful, automatic backup under Windows 10, with some complications from malware.

Every week, my Windows 10 system backs everything up unto my Linux file server (from where it is backed up again). This is with the Win7-compatible utility. It worked without any issues for years, all automated.

Around the new year, it started failing. With some detective work, it appears that the problem is:

1. Windows won't backup a malware-infected file. Fair enough.
2. At some point, someone sent me malware in an attachment. Happens.
3. If I clean the malware from the Windows PC, Thunderbird notices a missing message and dutifully redownloads it. This re-blocks the backup.

The obvious solution is to find the infected file on the mail server, and delete it there, The problem is to find it, I get maybe 100 messages per day and a window of maybe a month, so there are thousands of messages I would need to sift through.

The next most obvious option is not to backup the local Thunderbrid data directory. The problem with that is that the granularity only goes down to c:/users/vanadium. I presently can backup successfully excluding that, but that's not much of a backup, is it?

What is my next step?

 

[harborsparrow]

I think there ought to be a setting in Thunderbird whereby deleting a message locally also deletes it off the server. That should fix it.

 

[Vanadium 50]

In principle, yes. But I don't want messages deleted, at least not right away. This is especially true in Windows, where applications steal the focus and its easy to delete something you don't want to.

 

[Vanadium 50]

As usual, posting fixed things...

So. upon a reboot, I am now able to select items in AppData. Holy smokes is there a lot of cruf there. With Mozilla and Thunderbird deselected (plus some long-since uninstalled software also gone) it runs just fine.

 

[hutchphd]

Is cruf a word? I like it....

 

[WWGD]

Do you suspect a possible name/name range or file extension, so you can use your email programs internal search engine?

 

[Mark44]

Is cruf a word?

I don't know about "cruf" but "cruft" is a word. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruft

 

[phinds]

I think he mean crud but I guess it could be cruft. They are somewhat synonymous.